Deepcool Dracula: Super Efficiency without Much Noise. Page 5

Performance

Cooling Efficiency Tests

The diagram below shows the results obtained during cooling-efficiency tests:

We have recently been impressed by the superb cooling efficiency demonstrated by Gigabyte’s WindForce 3X system, but today we see that Dracula didn’t leave it a single chance: the new Deepcool product outperformed the competitor in all speed modes. I would like to specifically point out the temperatures of the overclocked GeForce GTX 580 with Dracula cooling fans running at 600 RPM: it never exceeded 80 degrees C! I believe there is no need to tell you that at this speed you absolutely can’t hear the fans, so they are in fact completely silent against the background noises from the rest of the system case. Dracula I also quite acoustically comfortable at 1000 RPM: here the advantage over triple-fan Gigabyte cooler working at its maximum speed reaches 4°C, but it doesn’t really matter if you take into account the difference in noise, which we are going to discuss in just a little bit.

Unfortunately, Gigabyte GeForce GTX 580 1.5 GB Super Overclock doesn’t allow monitoring the temperatures of its VRM components, so it is hard to tell how well the new Deepcool Dracula copes with their cooling. However, since the graphics card remained perfectly stable at increased clock speeds for a minimum of 30-35 minutes, we could, probably, say with certainty, that the cooler does its job well indeed. Moreover, I would also like to add that we had to give up our initial intention to also test Deepcool Dracula on Sapphire Radeon HD 6950 2 GB Toxic Edition, because the heatsink enclosed with the Dracula cooler turned out incompatible with the second revision of the reference Radeon HD 6950, which is the one Sapphire used for their product. But I believe the tests we performed using overclocked GeForce GTX 580 give us a good idea of what the newcomer is capable of.

Noise Tests

The difference in the level of noise generated by these two coolers is simply enormous. Up until 1000 RPM two 120 mm Deepcool fans do not add anything to the acoustic performance of the quiet system case, while the three 92 mm Gigabyte WindForce 3X fans can only be that quiet up to 1550 RPM – the speed, which the graphics card never hits even when idling in 2D mode. Even from a purely subjective standpoint we can say that Deepcool fans are awesome – they work smoothly and silently, without any vibrations, crackling or other parasitic sounds.

Conclusion

The new Deepcool Dracula cooler is an ideal product for those owners of single-GPU High-End graphics accelerators, who value not only efficient cooling, but also low-noise operation and are eager to sacrifice four PCI slots on their mainboard for the sake of that. Deepcool’s excellent Dracula cooler will meet the needs of those for $75. As for the drawbacks, we could mention that the VRM heatsink is incompatible with the second revision of the reference AMD Radeon HD 6970 and HD 6950 graphics cards and lacks a fan rotation speed variator, PWM-control support or at least a Y-splitter among the bundled accessories. Other than that, the cooler is simply impeccable, and besides superb cooling efficiency in fan-on mode, can also cope easily with such products as Radeon HD 6770 without any fans attached. Take a look: